All Politics is now Global

India’s War on Terror: Solution is Self-Defense, Not Consensus

Instead of eliminating the invaders, Nehru made a deadly mistake: He took the matter for mediation to the United Nations.

UN member states have never even been able to agree on a definition of terrorism. Some of the states, such as Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, overtly or covertly practice, promote or fund terrorism.

Emboldened by international and Indian inaction, Pakistan has continued masterminding terror strikes against India.

New Delhi might do well bear in mind a central message from the history of wars: The dialogue of peace and non-violence alone is futile with those who understand only the language of power and punishment.

India, like Israel, would do better to fight its own war on terror.

In the wake of the recent coordinated terror strikes in Paris on November 13, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has made a fresh appeal for a concerted global strategy to fight terrorism. In his opening remarks at the ASEAN-India Summit in Kuala Lumpur on November 21, he said, “Terrorism has emerged as a major global challenge. … we should see how we can enhance our cooperation at the regional and international level, including through support for adoption of Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.”

The previous week, addressing the G20 leaders at Antalya on November 15, Modi had lamented, “We don’t have a comprehensive global strategy to combat terrorism… we tend to be selective in using the instruments that we have… We should strengthen efforts to prevent supply of arms to terrorists, disrupt terrorist movements and curb and criminalize terror financing.”

Sadly, there is nothing new in Modi’s appeal to combat terror. Such an appeal has also been made by India’s previous leaders. In 2005 then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said to the media on his arrival from the United Kingdom: “Terrorism is a global phenomenon. We have faced this scourge for the last 20-25 years. The incident (London transit bombings) calls for joint efforts to combat the scourge.”

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Given this reality, India, with all its moral, legal, diplomatic and military strength, would do better to fight its own war on terror.

Terrorism in India, in its current form, dates back to 1947. It on October 26, 1947 that Pakistan came up with the ideology of Islamist terrorism and dispatched its warriors — Pakistani soldiers in guise of Pakhtoon raiders — into India’s Kashmir to capture it. The Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, could have crushed the invaders then and there. [2]

Instead of eliminating the invaders, however, Nehru made a deadly mistake: He took the matter for mediation to the United Nations. India has paid heavy price for this ever since. The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has remained deprived of two fifths of its territory — Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The United Nations passed a ceasefire resolution on December 31, 1948 that merely divided the state. A 1951 UN resolution provided for a referendum under the UN supervision after Pakistan withdrew its troops from the part of Kashmir (PoK) that Pakistan captured in 1947. But the United Nations never pressured Pakistan to honor the resolution and vacate the PoK.

Thereafter, emboldened by international and Indian inaction, Pakistan has continued masterminding terror strikes against India from time to time. According to an August 11, 2008 report in the magazine India Today, between 1980 to 2008, terrorism claimed around 150,000 lives in India. [3] The former Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh, Shanta Kumar, wrote on August 23, 2011 in the New Delhi newspaper Punjab Kesari that in 1989, the Kashmir Valley had a population of over half a million Pandits, the only Hindu natives of Kashmir. Their number stands reduced to about four thousand today. By 2000, terrorists had killed over 34,252 citizens and wounded another 17,484. They set fire to over 10,000 houses and destroyed huge amounts of individual and public property in the state. This has left the minorities in the Kashmir Valley with no choice but to flee their homes.

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India could learn from other democracies, such as Israel, which has also suffered many years of terrorism, and has resorted, for its national security, to a policy of self-defense.